


January 3, 1991.

by mousepatrol



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, fyi when i wrote this he had a brother in law named Gerard, he had a sister but here she was long dead, thats not his actual brother, the exact point where xeno goes from being blissfully happy to a shell of a person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-16 00:33:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14800916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mousepatrol/pseuds/mousepatrol
Summary: It was like the breath had been taken right out of his lungs; the oxygen sapped from the air that he breathed.





	January 3, 1991.

It was a quiet winter’s day. There was a pristine layer of snow blanketing the rolling hills that surrounded the Lovegood’s home in Ottery St. Catchpole, and the sun just barely peeked out behind grey clouds. The house was in a state of post-lunch drowsiness that afternoon, and upstairs in his study Xenophilius was having trouble finding just the right words to conclude his latest article.

He tapped the back of his pen on his chin – a fountain pen! What a wonderful invention Arthur had gifted him! – and hummed as he thought. Xeno scribbled out a couple of words and sighed. Sometimes articles wrote themselves, and other times it was like pulling teeth just to finish a sentence.

On the opposite side of the small room, a little girl shifted in a squishy leather armchair. She pulled her feet up onto the seat, then threw them over one of the arms, and then turned upside-down so that her curly hair almost touched the floor. She put the book she had been reading over her face, and then asked in a muffled voice, “Do you think mummy is lonely down there?”

Xeno glanced over his shoulder. His bored expression faded away as he chuckled at the girl’s antics, shaking his head. “No Luna, mummy’s not lonely. She knows we’re right up here, but she’s working right now,” he told her, swiveling around to look at her properly as she took the book from her face and closed it, laying it on the floor.

“I know, but… Don’t you think she would want some company? You have me, but she doesn’t have anybody downstairs,” she countered.

“Your mum has a very special job and she needs to focus really hard on it, love. You get to hang out with me because it’s alright if I’m not paying close attention to what I’m doing all the time. Mummy needs to concentrate and it’s easier for her to do that when she’s by herself.”

Luna pulled herself back right-side-up on the chair, frowning. “Yeah, but… What if I just brought her a biscuit and said hi, so she really knows we’re here? And then I’ll know she’s not lonely, so I won’t be distracted and then I can read my book again,” she said, trying to bargain with him. 

He smirked. Luna was obviously just bored and looking for an excuse to find something more fun to do than sit silently in her father’s office until he finished his writing for the day. Xeno crossed his arms and tilted his head, pretending like he was thinking long and hard about his decision before he said, “Alright. You be quick though, okay? Just a biscuit and a hug and then you let her get back to work. Got it?”

She seemed positively ecstatic. “Got it!”

Xeno watched his daughter race out of the room, her little feet pattering down the spiral staircase and into the kitchen. He listened for a moment more, hearing the jar of biscuits they kept on the counter open and close, and then more footsteps until they disappeared down into the basement. Sighing, he turned around and picked up his pen again to continue his work.

This time, things seemed to flow a bit better. The delightful scratch of his pen on the parchment was soothing, and he ended up being able to write quite a bit more in thirty minutes than he had in the whole afternoon. The time did seem to get away from him, though – Luna had been gone much longer than Xeno had planned on, but he’d been so absorbed in his work that he hadn’t noticed.

And then it happened.

The whole house shook as if a bomb had gone off inside of it, and the noise that came from the basement was just as loud. Xeno’s ears were ringing as he scrambled out of his seat in a panic, knowing exactly what must have occurred, and he raced down the same stairs his daughter had ventured down earlier. He passed the first floor, nearly tripping on his robes as he descended one more level to the basement, and threw open the wooden door to Pandora’s lab.

A misty veil hung over the stone room, and shattered vials of who-knows-what were covering the floor. The first thing on Xeno’s mind was Luna, and he found the girl cowering against the far wall with her face covered by her hands. He sprinted over to her, heart racing as he crouched by her side to make sure she was okay.

“Is anything broken?”

“No… No, mum – “

Xeno didn’t listen. He immediately heaved her into his arms and Luna clung to his neck as he carried her out of the lab. She was trembling, and when they reached the sitting room he laid her gently on the couch and wrapped a blanket around her. Little cuts covered her face and hands, and for a second Xeno thanked Merlin that it was winter and she had been mostly covered up. He wiped off the blood as best as he could for now, and then held her by the shoulders as he said, “Don’t move. Stay here. Everything’s gonna be okay.”

There were tears in Luna’s eyes as she watched her father turn away and head back down to the basement.

Now, Xeno was starting to feel truly terrified. Pandora hadn’t said anything, hadn’t come running out of the lab with Luna – she was nowhere to be seen as the dusty shroud in the room began to lift. He started at the corners, digging through the rubble that the explosion had created, and found nothing but dirt and stone. As he crossed the room to push her heavy workbench out of the way, he could feel his heart beating out of his chest as it begun to settle in that he should have heard something from her by now if she was conscious.

With the last of his strength, Xeno threw his weight into the broken workbench and it cracked as it toppled over to reveal more of the wreckage. He blinked, seeing a glint in the remains, and then feverishly started digging through it. As he pushed boxes of books and smashed bottles away, he discovered that the glint had come from a ring, and that ring was stuck firmly onto a limp hand that could only have been his wife’s.

“Pandora - ” he breathed, the blood pumped through his veins so quickly that he began to feel lightheaded. Xeno plunged his arm down into the pile until he felt her shoulder, grabbing it firmly and pulling her out. The woman was like a ragdoll, and her warm brown skin was covered in grey dust and deep gashes. With strength from years spent hiking the globe, he heaved her into his arms and then sat her down against the only wall that hadn't crumbled. He crouched in front of her, but when she wouldn’t stay up, Xeno started to hyperventilate.

Her hair was matted from all of the blood that’d dried in it, and in several places her bones seemed to have been crushed from the impact of the accident. Xeno held her disfigured face in his hands, almost unable to recognize the woman he loved so dearly through the tears that distorted his vision. Not a breath came from her lungs, and there was no pulse to be felt at the base of her neck. 

Xeno shook her, as if trying to wake her up. “No no no…” he whimpered, a great pain rising in his chest. “No no no, Panda bear… Panda, I’m here, my love… I’m right here…”

He couldn’t hold her there any longer, and her body collapsed to the side. Xeno wasn’t crying as he moved away and pulled his knees into his chest – he was wailing like a wounded animal, digging his nails into his legs and hoping to hell and back that he was only having a nightmare - some twisted flashback, a skewed memory of his sister's failing health from years ago. It seemed like hours passed as he howled and wept with grief before his voice went hoarse and he was reduced to shivering on the floor in the ruined workroom. His senses started to come back, and finally he got to his feet with the last ounce of energy he had left. Xeno took one final glance at the body of his wife, numb from the horror, and then decided the first thing he needed to do was go back to his daughter.

He made the slow climb back up the staircase, his shoes filled with lead, and went back into the sitting room where he’d left Luna. She looked more scared now than before he had gone to look for her mother, and Xeno sat down beside her with a weight in his stomach. He clasped his hands together between his knees and took a tiny breath before he said in a raspy voice:

“B-baby? W-w-hat happened t-to mummy?”

The girl shook her head, her body still trembling from the shock. “I don’t kn-know… I said hi and gave h-her a biscuit a-and sh-she… She k-kept working, and I – and then it – I d-don’t know what h-happened…”

Xeno nodded very slowly. He and Gerard were always worried something like this would happen, but they had trusted Pandora. They trusted that she knew what she was doing, and that safety was her biggest priority. And now, the worst thing in the world had happened. “Okay… Okay okay o-okay…”

“She’s okay?”

“N-no. No, she’s not.”

He didn’t know what he was supposed to do next. When his sister had died, they’d all been around her in a bed and everyone knew what was going to happen and arrangements had already been stealthily made. This time, there was nothing. He didn’t know what to do with the body. He didn’t know how he was supposed to get a coffin, make a grave, and have some sort of funeral. He couldn’t think. He could barely breathe – it was like his lungs were filled with water, he didn’t even know how to survive anymore. He’d built his whole life with Pandora just to have it shattered in a matter of seconds; time had stopped.

Luna crawled out of her blanket, moving over towards her father with her eyebrows knitted together. “Then she needs… She needs to go to the hospital… Dad - dad we need to get her to the hospital, we – we have to get Ginny’s dad’s flying car and we have to take her to the hospital! Dad!!”

She had grabbed Xeno’s arm and was shaking him violently, screaming in his ear. He wouldn’t move, staring blankly into space, and Luna dissolved into sobs on his shoulder. For several minutes they sat there, until the girl was so exhausted that she’d crumpled into a heap next to him and Xeno finally glanced down at her.  
He rose to his feet and she sat up again, the scratches on her face now dry and closed up. Xeno turned and gazed at her but all he could see was the mangled face of his wife staring back at him, lifeless and cold and never to share another memory with him again. Luna scooted to the edge of her seat and wrapped her arms around her father’s middle as she desperately looked for some sort of comfort, and he almost flinched at her touch.

With a deep breath, he gently stroked the girl’s hair as she clung to him and he knew he had to pull himself together at least for a minute for his daughter. He knelt down so that they could meet each other’s eyes, and Luna’s forehead rested on his own. She let out a little hiccup and sniffled, her arms limp around her father’s neck.

“What’s going to happen to mummy?” she asked in a whisper.

Xeno brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes. “We’re gonna find a real good spot for her and let her rest.”

“You mean we’re gonna bury her,” said Luna without any emotion or hesitation. “Because that’s what you do when somebody dies.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that is what you do.”

She pulled away from him, crossing her arms over her chest and grabbing her shoulders as if she was keeping herself from falling apart. Once more, Xeno straightened up. This time, he offered his hand to Luna and beckoned her to come with him.

“Let’s go owl your uncle, Luna. We can’t do this by ourselves.”

**Author's Note:**

> Drabble written for an old roleplay. Gerard was Pandora's brother (Luna's uncle, Xeno's brother-in-law). Pandora was a woman of colour, and Luna rightly so of mixed race.


End file.
